


stem to stern; (barbed wire. whispered nothings.)

by neurolink



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Consensual Kink, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, M/M, Physical Abuse, Power Imbalance, Revenant's 11 inch dick, Unhealthy Relationships, minor appearance/mentions of gibraltar, yes crypto built him a dick don't ask
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:08:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26038444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neurolink/pseuds/neurolink
Summary: "How sickening, how beautiful they are together, and how perfect... metal and flesh and synth-skin entangled. How flawlessly Revenant fits around him and inside him, and how pleasingly Crypto’s body slots down against sharp metal slopes, head tucked beneath Revenant’s chin. Half-man and machine, entwined to the point that Crypto no longer knows where skin ends and wires and gears begin."An off-the-record partnership between the Games' simulacrum and hacker descends into something twisted. Not love — nothing more than a cruel, desperate, and carnal pretence of intimacy.But perhaps it's the deliverance they've both been searching for.
Relationships: Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Revenant
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	stem to stern; (barbed wire. whispered nothings.)

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a Crypto-centric drabble, based on extensive talk about the ship with a friend. If something seems context-less, that's why. Someday I may make a full collection based around them from the novel-length fic I've had plotted out for a while, if I ever have the mind for it!
> 
> Pronunciation and translations for the Korean lines are available at the end.

Skeletal, metal fingers curl tight around the synth-skin of his throat, their grip cold and crushing. What little of the acid in his stomach that can squeeze past Revenant’s throat-throttling grasp pools in the back of his mouth, turning the taste of it bitter. It is a taste that is violent, cruel... a taste that is unforgettably and unapologetically _Revenant_. It’s a flavour discernible even in touch: in the ruthless intent etched into every knob and joint that presses into the skin of Crypto’s neck. Crypto wriggles under the brutal force, hips bucking forward uncontrollably, his chest tight and wracked with feverish whimpers.

He’s been here before, countless times. Sprawled on his back, his legs flailing and fists pummelling at the mechanical terror above him. Dirt caking in his open wounds, churning into red-brown mud inside him as he thrashes like a roach upturned. Revenant looming over him, splattered head to toe in crusting, pungent crimson, the blood of his marks (Crypto among them) trickling from his faceplate down onto man held fast beneath him. And Crypto remembers, vividly, the raw ache of his bruised and beaten face as Revenant snatched a metal jaw in his fingertips, prising Crypto’s mouth wide open. He remembers the suffocating tang of human blood dripping down between his lips and staining his teeth with scarlet iron. He remembers a wicked chuckle so soft that he just barely caught the sound of it above his own stuttering groans. He remembers the panic that bloomed in his gut as his lungs collapsed, as blood filled his mouth and pooled in the back of his throat — and he remembers how his chest thrust up in shallow, frantic bursts that drew no air.

And, like countless times before, Crypto is acutely aware (even in his drunken, asphyxiated haze) of how _helpless_ he lies beneath the simulacrum.

The feeling weighs heavier than the half tonne of metal braced mere inches above him. Helplessness, a terror even more suffocating than the vicious hold around his throat... the _know_ ing that he is caged at the mercy of another, his every escape route barred off; the _know_ ing that it would be the end of the line for him should Revenant decide, on a sudden and sadistic whim, that he preferred Crypto’s spine in pieces.

All these months spent running, all his efforts to weasel himself into the heart of Syndicate activity, and all those pains lived through to wholly dismantle and replace the face of Park Tae-joon with a stranger in his mirror... wasted, all in the blink of an eye. _They_ ’d find him here in Revenant’s bed, and there would be no lack of evidence for them to recreate the grisly picture of how Kim Hyeon fought to the very moment of his death: with his upper body forcefully anchored against a plush mattress by the inhuman hand that shackles his neck, his heels dragging across carpet in frantic and fruitless search of purchase.

But the shivers that rush down his spine and through his arms as he claws at Revenant’s forearm, spluttering under the still-tightening chokehold, aren’t born from terror.

His face has gone numb and his vision speckled with black when Revenant suddenly releases him, slotting dislocated shoulder back into place with a _click_. Crypto slips down from the edge of the bed, crashing hard on his knees and doubling over as air rushes into his lungs. His palms are rubbed raw from where they skidded across carpet to take the brunt of his fall, and the skin beneath his neck’s synth-brace throbs. It’s sure to bruise visibly beneath Crypto’s implants, more than enough that he’ll have to slip into a longer-necked undershirt in the next week’s Games... if he’s in any shape then to participate.

Crypto reaches up to draw fingertips against his throat, wincing at the the pain that flares in his nerves at the gentle pressure. There’s spit drying and crusting at the corners of his mouth; he’s straining through his pants, the front of his boxers soaking wet with precum. A dirty and dishevelled display, nothing that Revenant hasn’t seen before. But it still takes everything Crypto has to resist the urge to push his thighs together, to hide away the shame of his sickening masochism.

The moment of respite proves brief. It’s more than generous, really, when he considers his choice in bedmates. He’s barely caught his breath when the thud of Revenant’s first stride, accompanied by that ever-disconcerting symphony of whirring gears and grating metal joints, snaps him attention. Revenant stalks forward, each step laced with unsettling intent, boxing Crypto in against the mattress side. There’s a sound beneath the buzzing of machinery, quiet but familiar, a sound which Crypto’s ears have been trained — and trained _well_ — to catch. It’s a deep and chest-rumbling snarl, not unlike the throaty grumbling of a large cat that has cornered its prey and primed itself to strike. It’s predatory, _carnivorous_... the sound of a ravenous creature drawing close to the promise of a feast.

Crypto knows well what follows. (And he knows — despite what every bone in his body screams as Revenant hovers nearer, the heat of his mechanical body almost too much to bear — that _he is not prey._

(Prey is eaten, snatched up into the jaws of the beast, gutted and devoured head to toe. Prey is given no scraps at its own Last Supper, offered no mercy but the final peace of death.

(Crypto is no predator, but he is not _prey_. When Revenant feasts, Crypto, too, eats. He, too, is permitted to partake in the _breaking_ and the eating _of his body_ — permitted to play his part in sating that hunger which ravages both machine and man.)

He crawls closer, slow and almost sheepish as he leans in to press a bare cheek against the heat of Revenant’s thigh. The warmth is dizzying, potent and sedative. It swallows his every last reservation as it blazes through his head and drowns the cry of his gut to ‘run, _run!_ ’ in the whirlwind of its carnal storm. 

And Crypto gladly tumbles forth, sinking into the tempest. 

Another heat awaits him there, yet unattended. He can feel it pulsating beneath the worn fabric, and he turns his head obligingly to mouth at Revenant’s erection through the loincloth. Minute twitches of interest meet his tongue and lips, and Crypto hums a soft moan through the cloth as he reaches down to undo the buttons of his own trousers. A hand lands on his shoulder and yanks him closer, pressing the curve of a rigid cock tight against his cheek. And Crypto relents, clumsily nosing the loincloth aside and parting his lips, eager to sate.

Before he can move, another hand slides atop his head, slithering fingers between locks of his hair. They grip, excruciatingly _tight_ — and then he’s dragged forward, his mouth shoved onto Revenant’s cock. He splutters around the sudden intrusion, tugging back in a knee-jerk reaction, spasming and fighting the fist curling in his hair. But Revenant doesn’t wait. (Revenant waits for nothing and for no one. Never has, and never _will_.) He only pushes deeper into Crypto’s mouth, unrelenting in his greedy pursuit of satisfaction, and leaves Crypto no choice other than to comply. Crypto _tries_ to adjust. His hands clamber up to grab at metal thighs, and he suppresses the sob that seizes his chest as his lips crack, forced open to accommodate Revenant’s girth. In return, the fist in his hair tightens, jerking his head up violently. He yelps, the sound muffled around Revenant’s cock, and straightens his back hurriedly to accommodate. His muscles scream in protest and, _fuck_ , he must have pulled something beneath his shoulder blade.

Nothing is enough to relieve the pain erupting in his scalp and neck. His head is on fire where Revenant clasps at hair tight enough to tear if he curled fingers any tighter, grip held _just_ high enough that Crypto can’t loosen the rending clutch in his hair without getting off his knees. But, caged between Revenant’s legs and the bed, his mouth stuffed full with no room left for air let alone words, there’s nothing Crypto can do but strain his neck and _whine_.

Revenant thrusts, and Crypto shouts — _tries_ to shout, but it’s muted, reduced to little more than a loudened hum by the thick length rounding out his mouth. It’s too much to take, too much all at once and too fast. His face is prickling with the heat of pain, his throat still sore. But Revenant shows no sign of retreating nor slowing. And Crypto can only lie there, digging his nails into the fabric lining Revenant’s legs, helpless to do anything except _take it_.

He loosens his jaw, forcing himself to breathe through his nostrils. As expected, Revenant continues without pause. He draws back leisurely, onto to _plunge_ back into Crypto’s mouth once more, yanking Crypto’s head further forward onto his cock as he pushes straight to the back of Crypto’s throat. Again and again, _harder_ , without care or constraint, as if Crypto were little more than his toy. There’s no indication that either Crypto’s pleasure or safety occupies his mind, and not a shred of kindness in his reckless movement.

Revenant has never been kind. But that doesn’t matter. Kindness is the last thing Crypto wants, after all, when he’s here in Revenant’s hands and between Revenant’s legs.

He thinks, unbidden, of Makoa’s smile and of the comfort of a broad hand pressed against his upper back. That gentle warmth that floods him each time his eyes meet Gibraltar’s, the heat that opens a cavern of yearning in the pits of his stomach. It’s a kindness that makes him ache awfully — a kindness he didn’t know he wanted, a kindness he knows he doesn’t _need_. Crypto can’t blame Makoa when the booming jolts of his heartbeat drown out the other man’s hearty bellows. Nor can he blame Makoa for the sudden, voracious craving for tenderness that consumes him whole whenever he strays too near to Makoa, close enough for the other to take notice and turn to him with broad smile and crinkled eyes. (He tries not to imagine those eyes smiling down at him, a large but considerate hand patting at his shoulder. He shoves the thought out of his mind, moans around the synthetic cock in his mouth and tries not to imagine how it would sit in his mouth and how it would taste if it were flesh and blood. Tries to think of _anything_ but how dearly he wants to loose his grip from a meaty thigh and cast about for another’s hand, to find warm and tender fingers waiting for his to slip between them.)

Crypto hungers with the same intensity with which he treated food when Mystik took him off the streets, snivelling and shivering, and into her home and kitchen. It’s the sort of dangerous hunger that drove food into his mouth without even tasting a bite, as if he would never eat so well again. _A threat too real on the streets of Suotamo_. It’s a cavernous desire, a cruel and unrelenting want that beats against the walls of his stomach and eats him inside-out. It's a desire he can’t afford to sate, a desire that will never leave him anything but aching. 

But, God, he can't blame Makoa. He never can.

Gibraltar only stirred the beginnings of that terrible hunger. He bears no guilt for the ways in which Crypto chooses to feed it: on his knees and trembling, like a trapped animal, between legs of steel and exposed wire.

But an animal has no capacity for such morbid thrill as it cowers beneath a predator, or for the paradoxical flare of masochistic pleasure that only serves to overwhelm their instinct of fight-or-flight. The unsophisticated savagery and the sloppiness fits him well enough, though — he thinks numbly as he inhales through his nostrils. Short bursts of helpless _moan-whimpers_ slip out past the solid length that sits on his tongue, stretching split and bloodied lips, and filling his cheeks.

He is pathetic. Less than an animal. 

And he must look it, too, with saliva pooling on his tongue, coaxed out by the ridges of the heavy synth-metal weight in his mouth until it dribbles in rivulets down his chin. He groans around Revenant and screws his watering eyes shut, trying not to imagine how he looks squirming with his mouth on Revenant’s dick, cheeks flushed and hollowed, sucking away as though he were _made_ for it.

His pants grow tighter with each moment Revenant spends inside him and with every calculated, merciless thrust that stretches his mouth to its very limit. Crypto reaches down mindlessly, fumbling with the last button of his trousers until they at last come undone, and dips his hand in to rub himself through his boxers. Revenant using his mouth as he pleases, the pressure of Crypto’s own palm against his throbbing cock, spurs from him a moan: a desperate, high-pitched sound he didn’t know he could make, a wretched sound that twists his chest with gruesome self-contempt. That, Revenant _does_ react to — with an even more violent jerk of Crypto’s hair, a brutish snarl, and a particularly hard thrust that leaves Crypto choking and dry-heaving around him. The battle to keep his frenzied breathing from escalating to hyperventilation feels near impossible. But, somehow, he manages.

His unsteady rhythm breaks as he’s dragged back by the unrelenting grip in his hair, lips tugged off from the artificial cock with a squelching _pop_! He’s left with his mouth hanging open, all of a sudden too empty and far too light. Tears streak down his red-hot cheeks, running across fresh scrapes and bruises. For all he was starving for air, he feels as if he’s forgotten how to breathe without Revenant in his mouth. He squeezes his eyes shut, chest still heaving with each burning breath. Even beneath the blackness of his eyelids, there’s no escape from the scene they set together. He sees it through Ji-ho and Ji-ha, stationed above with their watchful Eyes.

Him — curled up beneath the terrifying, yet inexplicably alluring, thrill of their violent and physical dynamic... a whole other sort of physical and violence than the blows exchanged in the Games, one so much more _personal_. And Revenant — immovable as ever, dripping in an infectious scarlet made not of blood but of _desire_ : a coppery and putrid desire that Crypto can taste when Revenant crushes his face beneath iron jaw and lips. Desire guided, dreadful and poisonous and fiery hot, to the back of Crypto’s throat where it trickles down to his gut and straight between his legs... a desire **_undefiable_**.

Crypto wishes he could turn his eyes away from the image of himself leaning limp against the bedside, his trousers shoved down his thighs and the bulge of his cock twitching visibly against soaked pants. He clamps his teeth together and lolls his head to press his face into the mattress, pushing his eyes against the jutted seams. As though that would help him escape the data streamed via his neurolink straight past his optic nerves, searing JiJi’s camera feed _crystal clear_ beneath his eyelids. 

He could disable the neurolink upon command, a reflex he’s long mastered and one that takes little more than a thought. But _he can’t_. " _Watch yourself_ ,"Revenant had snarled just moments before his hand had found its purchase on Crypto’s neck, " _and don’t you dare shut it off. Or_ else."

And Crypto, too forgetful of the power Revenant’s commands held once their partnership stepped beyond matters of the Syndicate and Hammond and into Revenant’s bed, had opened his mouth to laugh. " _Or else_ what _?_ " he taunted. Would have taunted — had Revenant’s fingers not then tightened his throat in their lethal embrace, robbing him of breath and returning to him the memory of just whose word it was that reigned when Crypto followed Death into its bedroom.

He watches the scene painted behind his eyes as the simulacrum releases his hold on Crypto’s hair and shifts, lowering himself onto plush red sheets. The dip of the bed and the telltale creak of Revenant’s joints are quick to rouse Crypto back into half-lucidity. His eyes follow hazily as Revenant moves to lean back in their bed, propping his elbows on the headboard with a dull _clank_. He parts his legs wide, and Crypto’s stare lands on the yawning space between Revenant’s thighs — empty and ready for him to occupy it. 

**“ _Ride me._ ”**

Crypto’s head snaps up, stomach dropping.

"I... w-" _Without lube?_ he nearly splutters, eyes wide, the rest of his startled response caught halfway up his swollen throat. He swallows thickly, glancing down to the glistening synth-metal cock erect and still generously wet with his saliva, before his gaze darts up to Revenant’s. Gleaming yellow optics gleam back at him, unmoving yet somehow expectant. Revenant says nothing in return to Crypto’s frantic gaping. He waits without a word, without movement, and with eerie gaze levelled at Crypto... a stare somehow ominous and commanding for all his lack of facial mobility.

Crypto has no choice.

(... but he does. He has never been afraid of turning his nose up at anyone and their demands. He is a man without fear, a man who has known hell and how to escape it, and he’s clever enough at that to skirt his way around any magnitude of consequence. Revenant is no different from any other nuisance that he’s denied thus far. The simulacrum is certainly dangerous, _deadly_ , a wild card with no qualms when it comes to exacting gruesome vengeances. But Crypto has the wit to outrun, to outsmart, and to _outlast_ until Revenant’s body eventually falls apart to the wear and tear of an impossible chase. And, when Revenant digs his way out of the shambles of another production facility, Crypto will have more than enough in him to do it again, again, and _again_.

(Revenant may be the brawn of their strange collaboration, but Crypto is the brain that Revenant never knew he’d needed. Not until Crypto had come knocking, offering up his mind in exchange for the promised death of a regime. And Crypto is the brain that Revenant now knows he can't _afford_ to lose.

(He could say _no_.

(He could _say no_. He could force himself off the floor, and he could flee before Revenant suspects a thing. No resource was truly barred from Crypto if he needed it desperately enough — he is a genius, after all — and if he wanted, he'd be halfway across the Frontier in a matter of days. He could deny Revenant his sadistic pleasures, could give in to the instinct inside him that has been screaming for him to run, _run and to never look back_. He could end this now; he _can_ end this now. 

( _He could say no._

(... but Tae-joon can’t. Not now, not here. Tae-joon is not without dignity nor without a pride that rears its fiery head anywhere and to anyone — _anywhere else_ but between Revenant’s legs, and to anyone _but_ Revenant. Crypto would sneer and jab, turning his nose up and away from the simulacrum’s demands without so much as a backwards glance. But here, knelt before Revenant, he is little more than a rat of Suotamo’s gutters and little more than the pitiful Syndicate cog willing to turn a blind eye for a meagre cheque. A boy without a voice; a man without an ounce of power.)

So he wipes the drool off his chin and onto the back of his hand, lifting himself up onto the bed and crawling atop Revenant. He settles, kneeling above a thin waist, his legs spread and knees bracing the outside of Revenant’s thighs. He reaches one hand back to spread himself open, the other grasping at Revenant’s slick length and dragging it to rest between his legs. He shivers as it slips between his cheeks, throbbing and weighty, and trails wetness along his cleft. He shifts — searching for a proper angle — and finds it, sinking teeth into his lower lip as Revenant’s tip prods at his hole. He exhales sharply, forcing out what anxiety he can in one trembling breath, and _moves_ , lowering himself onto Revenant without another thought.

Maybe, Crypto realises a moment too late, he bit off more than he could chew. 

He only half-manages to bite back the scream that pierces the silence of the apartment as the head of Revenant’s cock pushes through and up inside him. It’s too fast, too much, it **_burns_** — “ _아파_ ¹,” he dry sobs, throwing his head back as his vision darkens and gravity threatens to drag him down backwards. “ _머_... _멈추다_ ²...”

Whether or not Revenant understands his incoherent babbling, Crypto doesn’t know. But he’s still lucid enough to feel the strong hand that slips around the back of an upper thigh and buttock, gripping him firmly. The other perches on his ribs and extends robotic fingers, net-like, across his upper back. Perfectly motionless hands suspend him securely above as he trembles, hands scrabbling behind him in search of support to steady himself upon. He doesn’t have the words nor mind to thank the simulacrum as he convulses, shuddering with pained groans that rack him from head to toe, his back arched and stinging where Revenant’s jointed fingers dig into his skin.

What a pitiful sight he must be for Revenant to show a scrap of compassion. But Crypto can’t muster the strength to despise himself for the pathetic display. If not for Revenant holding him up, his legs would have given in, too slack from the mind-numbing pain to support his weight... and he would have slipped down, speared and torn himself further apart. He’s thankful for the rare, small mercies.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like this. But Revenant says nothing, demands nothing — _small mercies_ — resigning himself to watchful silence as he settles for holding Crypto still, waiting.

Every muscle in Crypto that’s trained to protect his life _shrieks_ for him to stop. To tear himself off of Revenant and away from the threat of further agony, and to curl into himself where the only discomfort to be found lives inside his head. But Tae-joon, gone too far to stop and too _eager to please_ , can’t. And _won’t_ until they both (or just Revenant) have been satisfied.

He forces his body to relax, slows his breath as much as he can, and he waits. 

The moments tick by. Minutes, perhaps even quarter-hours. But his efforts are rewarded: As his tenseness subsides, so does the burning inside him formerly too excruciating to define. Slowly it dulls into a manageable ache — though he’s too sore, too stretched out to believe that he _isn’t_ on the very verge being split in two. But he’s at least recovered enough to reclaim use of his slackened limbs, to ease himself up from the fingers cutting into his upper back, and to hold himself up.

His thighs tremble, straining to carry his weight. Crypto grits his teeth through the pain as the dizzying haze of pain ploughs through and into his every nerve and vein. He braces his hands on Revenant’s chest, fighting against the slick of sweat that threatens to slip his palms out from under him, and _takes_ it. His heart is racing, deafening in his ribcage and, God, if it pounds any faster, he might die right here on Revenant’s lap. (And if he does, how ironic would it be: that it would be Crypto himself who manufactured the very apparatus that would kill him?)

The silence between them shatters as the purr of machinery beneath him loudens into a beastly growl that goes straight to Crypto’s gut:

**“ _Slowly... that’s it._ ”**

The words ring in his ears, Revenant’s voice more guttural than Crypto has ever heard it before. And it’s all he needs to steel himself and to _push_ , rocking himself down slowly and taking Revenant inch by inch. God, Revenant’s so big — he’s barely halfway down, but it takes his every ounce of self-restraint to calm the whimpers of distress (and of anticipation) that beg to burst from his lungs. He pauses to rest and to adjust, sucking a shallow breath in through clenched teeth. His heart hasn’t stopped drumming, thunderous, in his chest.

Without warning, Revenant bucks up into him, pushing _deeper_ and stretching Crypto further yet — and out slips a startled, quavering wail that Crypto thought he’d caged away in his chest. Oh, _God_ , he’s stuffed so full, _fuck!_ , he can feel Revenant all the way inside him. Sweat beads profusely on his forehead, trickling down the bridge of his nose and his temples as he pants, squirming on Revenant’s cock.

“ _어머_ ³ ... _어머나_ ⁴ —” A wave of painful nausea tides over Crypto, drowning his sight along with it. Blackening vision and dizziness strip away his balance, disorienting him long enough for his palms to slip out from under him. He tumbles, crashing down face-first onto Revenant’s chest with a sharp yelp of pain as his jaw strikes metal _hard_. He doesn’t know if he’s cracked bone or metal, if the noise on impact was the clang of metal, or if it was the clacking of teeth against teeth. He presses his forehead down into Revenant’s chestplate, shivering and whimpering. His jaw stings, the inside of his bitten cheek welling fresh with the taste of iron.

The taste of blood is wet on his lips, and Revenant (so sharply attuned to the smell of blood) surges forward to strike. Crypto barely has time to brace his elbows under him and push himself back up; no sooner has he lifted himself from Revenant’s chest than metal fingers wrap around his jaw, forcing his eyes up to glowing yellows. He meets the gaze dazedly, parting his lips as he casts about for words — for their twisted version of whispered sweet nothings, bitten and drained of all the ‘ _sweet_ ’ and woven throughout instead with barbed and coiling wire. 

But he’s given no chance to talk. His mouth has just fallen an inch open when Revenant plunges steel digits into his mouth and onto his tongue. Crypto jerks instinctively, gagging at the unexpected violation. But Revenant’s careless use of him has its benefits. It’s easy, almost _too_ easy to part his lips wider and to take Revenant’s fingers down his open mouth and throat. Even extended to their fullest, they’re nothing when his mouth has been used by the entirety of Revenant’s girth and length, pounded thoroughly as if Crypto were nothing more to him than a living fleshlight — a plaything for Revenant to abuse, to siphon pleasure from as savagely as he pleases.

Crypto groans, clenching instinctively around Revenant, and oh, _oh_ , God, the movement shifts Revenant inside him at a depth and an angle that hits _just right_. A desperate moan tears out from his lungs. It’s a sound he hadn’t known he could make if he wasn’t afire, pleasure running like electricity down his spine and igniting his every nerve. He doesn’t need to see through JiJi’s eyes to know how disgustingly undignified he looks: a bruised and bloody and scraped mess, mewling and wriggling like a mindless animal, split apart on the artificial cock of a killing machine. He should be shrivelling beneath the shame of it. But his cock twitches against the cloth-softened ridges of Revenant’s robotic spine, his heart leaping further and faster now than it ever has in the Game arenas. For all the near-tangible shame that churns his stomach, it only stirs the pleasure and the ache burning hot in his gut. 

He’s so full, so close to his edge. He’d cum, if he let himself, right here and now on Revenant’s cock. But that hunger inside him yearns and clamours for more, _more, **more**_. 

If he could beg with Revenant’s fingers in his mouth, how he would _beg_! — beg for Revenant to fill him, for Revenant to empty that fat cock inside his aching hole, for Revenant to fuck him so raw that Tae-joon won’t know if he’s on the edge of unconsciousness or _death_ when the simulacrum’s had his fill. Humiliation burns in his gut when he imagines the mess he’ll be when all’s said and done: panting, bleeding and beaten black-and-blue, gaping and cum-filled, fit only to be tossed aside once he’s fulfilled Revenant’s use for him.

But all Crypto can do is slobber around the metal fingers splitting the skin of his lips as Revenant flexes his digits inside Crypto’s mouth, testing the limits of his throat and tearing his lips wider open than when they’d been wrapped around Revenant’s dick. He moans and whimpers, writhing on Revenant’s cock and around Revenant’s fingers. He’s aching to _move_ , to feel, itching for Revenant to take him — to _use_ him like the filthy slut that he looks and sounds like.

He blinks through teary lashes, rolling pleading eyes up to meet Revenant’s optics. They glare back coldly, luminous and wraith-like in the dark of the bedroom, and Crypto’s cock throbs with the exhilaration of being held beneath such vicious scrutiny. These are Death’s eyes, there’s no question about it. And yet, despite the fearful skip of his thundering heart, he can’t tear his eyes away from those shimmering yellows that so often ensnare him both in terror and in inexplicable entrancement.

It was that sort of boldness, he thinks, that sealed his demise from their first meeting. The haughty glares tossed in Revenant’s direction, the arrogant stares directed straight into gleaming mechanical eyes, and the unrestrained disrespect Crypto heaped upon the simulacrum could’ve only tempted a grim fate. But he had nothing left to lose then, and he has less to lose _now_. His grave has been prepared for him — dug and awaiting him since the very day Park Tae-joon died and vanished — and his deathbed made long before the day he finally laid himself out atop Revenant’s sheets, spreading his legs and offering all he had left to his personal bringer of Death.

(How fitting that he first met Death’s eyes with his own defiant stare... and that one day soon, he will die, holding those very same eyes with a tender and aching intimacy that he has never known before Revenant.)

Revenant pulls his fingers back at last, his interest in Tae-joon’s mouth fizzled out, and Tae-joon falls forward to lean against him, breathless and floating. He’s so overwhelmed, worn through and through, and so _high_. Crypto wonders if Revenant knows what he does to Crypto... what he does for Crypto. Tae-joon can condense it all into a number: into how much liquor, how many packs of cigarettes, and how many cold and numbingly lonely nights that the simulacrum has saved him.

And to imagine that Revenant would think that he is little more than a last resort.

"You think I would _settle_ for you?" The words come panted and groaned against Revenant’s jaw. Crypto tastes himself: the musk of his breath, hot and coppery as it warms the air between his bruising face and Revenant’s chest, condensing in droplets between skin and metal. "You think I couldn’t find something better if I didn’t want this?"

He tightens purposefully around the thickness splitting him, grinding himself down into Revenant’s lap. He tilts his head back, eyelids fluttering as he takes in the sight of them from JiJi’s cameras. 

How sickening, how beautiful they are together, and how perfect... metal and flesh and synth-skin entangled. This is all that remains of the men they once were: men ruined, reduced to shambles and shadows of their former lives. How flawlessly Revenant fits around him and inside him, and how pleasingly Crypto’s body slots down against sharp metal slopes, head tucked beneath Revenant’s chin. Half-man and machine, entwined to the point that Crypto no longer knows where skin ends and wires and gears begin; enmeshed so thoroughly that, in the mess of limbs and heat, he cannot discern which parts belong to him and which belong to Revenant. 

Woven together ( _barbed wire, whispered nothings_ ), damp with sweat and the musk of sex, they twist into one another. Between the sheets, they melt and clash together, sharp edges and blood and damaged flesh. And they bleed into one, into a shared suffering that has no name except for those soft whispers ( _promises of death_ ) exchanged in the dark of night, when all that is there to be had _has been_ had of one another. In the early morning hours, when they have peeled their limbs apart, when skin has been separated from overheated metal, and when Crypto’s body should once more be his own.... Then, even then, he is so worn and so used that he is never quite sure anymore if his body is truly **his**.

But it was his when he surrendered his ownership to it — when he accepted that it would never belong solely to him again. It was his, then, when he chose Death as its new master... and that, Tae-joon thinks, is all that matters.

"You think you could have any of me if I didn’t _let_ you?" Crypto slides half-bare fingers down his side, gliding a dampened palm over the white ‘H’ etched atop the back of Revenant’s hand. He grips the metal wrist, tugging it off his waist — sighs, inaudibly, at the relief of pressure against his bruised skin — and wrenches the other’s hand firmly away. His fingers curl around Revenant’s wrist, tugging it forward and pressing the sharp metal palm to his belly. (From _stem_ , the word echoes in his mind, sounded out on his lips in a silent litany...)

He guides Revenant’s hand up over his bare chest and up to his throat. He leaves it resting there, metal fingers splayed open, spider-like, across his collarbone. 

(... to _stem_.)

Every nerve in him is afire, his every instinct screaming at him to thrash against the touch, to flee or to fight to the death if he must. A natural reaction to a predator — but Park Tae-joon, genius and prodigy, has never been a natural man... nor son, nor brother, nor _lover_.

He smiles faintly and tilts his head back, exposing the flesh of his throat. An invitation.

" _Oh_ ," Crypto moan-sighs, shuddering minutely as the metal hand finds a perch around his neck. A hand that has pierced so many hearts and spilt so much blood, a hand that has taken so many lives. He swallows against the grip, feels his Adam’s apple struggle against the steadily tightening grip, and his heart pounds even faster, harder.

He thinks about Revenant in battle, all viciousness and sharp and cutting edge. He thinks about the fingers wrapped almost the entire circumference of his neck, fingers that could slice flesh open with ease. And, despite himself, Crypto pushes forward into the touch. 

Revenant could slit his throat if he wanted. Crypto is scared, _terrified_ , flooded by a fear that he hasn’t felt the likes of since he was a boy: a street rat cowering beneath the threat of men with knives, guns, weapons foreign to a child who hadn’t even learnt to hold a pen. It’s a dread that he hasn’t known since barely surviving the streets of Suotamo... an anxiety that gripped his chest each day as he scrounged for scraps of food. A fear that ate at an already empty stomach as he relocated his makeshift bed each night, watching over his shoulder for the Task Force who brought with them nothing but promises of beatings for homeless misconduct... and, if you were truly unlucky, enrolment into social services programmes under supervisors too busy fussing over the sugars in their coffee to spare a second glance for the children raking in their funding. It’s a terror that hasn’t swallowed him whole since he stood in back alleys, teeth bared at bigger boys trying to intimidate him with makeshift shivs — trying to leech the money _Tae-joon_ had scraped, traded, and thieved for.

It’s a fear he’s not felt since he was twelve and Miss Ticacek took him into her home, a place where he was told that he could sleep and eat without worry. A place intent on giving him chance after second chance to rebuild what little trust he had left, to clean himself up from the filth of the gutters, and to forge a proper life for himself. A place that gave him the girl who would become his dearest friend and partner, a place founded by the very woman that he would one day call _Mother_.

But he feels it now: that fear which constricts his chest and knots in his stomach. He can’t breathe, and he doesn’t know if it’s the panic that’s stripping his lungs of breath or if it’s Revenant’s ever-tightening chokehold. His vision is hazy, and his mind’s eye is splattered in red, blood, _red, red **blood** red_.

And, still, both his heart and his cock jump with exhilaration at the thought. There must be something wrong with him, something dreadfully fucking wrong, for him to chase solace in the arms of a simulacrum whose sole purpose for centuries was to take and to kill. But the lines between them — between what’s _right_ and what’s _wrong_ — have long blurred and muddled.

"Don’t think," he hisses up, crowding in to hover against Revenant’s mouth again, "for a second that I'd settle if I didn’t want it. You’re used to taking, aren’t you? So _take_ it."

Revenant around him, inside him. He’s burning up, so full in a way that he's never been, and he only craves _more_. “— take me. All of me.” 

He closes the space between metal and flesh. Revenant’s lips are static as ever beneath his, and Crypto shudders, open-mouthed, against them. He doesn’t know if Revenant can feel him, if he can taste the salt of the sweat on Crypto’s skin or the blood that Crypto’s tongue sweeps across the line between sculpted lips. But he doesn’t need to know.

"It’s" ~~_I’m_~~ "yours."

All Revenant needs to do, all Revenant _ever_ needed to do, is to take it.

"Please," he gasps, barely grasping at words as he rocks back and forth on Revenant’s lap. He's too hot, burning up inside and outside, _it's too much_ — he flattens himself against Revenant, lays his forehead down against Revenant’s chest, and slithers trembling arms up and around the back of the simulacrum's neck. He twitches against Revenant's chest, inconsolable and insatiable as he swallows what he can of Revenant's cock, taking it as deep inside him as it can possibly go. Crypto sobs, tears darkening the crimson red scarf beneath his face, his head shaking as he thrusts wildly. It's all at once too much and too little — the friction stretching him so wide that his insides scorch, every little movement flooding him with overstimulation and leaving him shaking from head to toe, but still, _still not enough_. "P... _please_... please, _내꺼_ ⁵. I want you... I-I, _쌀거 같아요_ ⁶ ..."

All that he has is Revenant’s. And anything that Revenant gives him — whether it be their strange and distorted language of love, or a hatred with which both are so much more intimately acquainted; the oh-so-rare affections and the light brushing of skin and metal hands (never to be acknowledged after), or the blood-curdling abuses so often flung from machine to man. Whether it be _whispered nothings_ or _barbed wires_...

... Tae-joon will take **_everything_**.

**Author's Note:**

> ¹ 아파 ; apa — trans: ‘it hurts’  
> ² 멈추다 ; meomchuda — trans: ‘stop’  
> ³ 어머 ; eomeo — trans: ‘oh my’  
> ⁴ 어머나 ; eomeona — trans: ‘oh my God’  
> ⁵ 어머 ; naekkeo — trans: Korean endearment, translated as ‘mine’  
> ⁶ 쌀거 같아요 ; ssalgeo gat-ayo — trans: ‘I’m cumming’
> 
> * * *
> 
> Other notes: since Crypto's drone had its name reveal in the Season 5 quests, I changed my headcanon drones (Ji-ho [offence drone] and Ji-ha [scouting drone], together: JiJi, or "GG") to be his retired, and now backup, drones. Hack is based on Ji-ha's code... hence _Ha_ ck.
> 
> If you're interested in more content and headcanons, you can find me on my [Crypto RP blog](http://enccrypted.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Talk to me about headcanons, Crypto, or anything Apex!


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